The latest addition to my website is Andrés Barb‘s Las Manos Pequeñas (Such Small Hands). Marina, a seven-year old girl, is involved in a car accident, in which her parents are killed and she is injured. She receives both physical and psychological treatment – the psychologist gives her a doll which she cherishes. She is then sent to an orphanage. It is soon clear that she does not fit in with the other girls, all of whom get on well together. She stands aloof from them and soon they are teasing and bullying her, all of which she stoically puts up with. However, when they take her doll and then bury it, she does react. She devises a game whereby, at night in the dormitory, one of the girls must be the doll, wearing a special dress and make-up and being treated by the others as a doll, while she, the doll, cannot speak. This is a superb novel about groups and fitting-in but also the darker side of human nature, as seen in children.